3 face sentencing in terror case

MANHATTAN — A federal judge on Wednesday will tell three of the Newburgh Four whether they'll spend the rest of their lives in prison.

BY DOYLE MURPHY

MANHATTAN — A federal judge on Wednesday will tell three of the Newburgh Four whether they'll spend the rest of their lives in prison.

James Cromitie, David Williams and Onta Williams face at least 25 years in prison following their conviction on terrorism charges from a failed plot to blow up synagogues in the Bronx and shoot down planes at Stewart Air National Guard Base.

A jury decided in October 2010 that the men had conspired with a fourth man — Laguerre Payen — and a man whom they believed was a terrorist recruiter from Pakistan. The recruiter was actually an informant named Shahed Hussain who was working for the FBI. He supplied the men with real-looking bombs and Stinger missiles and secretly recorded hours of the conversations prosecutors used during their two-month trial.

Defense attorneys claimed Hussain and the FBI pushed the men to commit the crime, and they have asked for shorter sentences. Prosecutors want the maximum of life in prison for the men.

Sentencing has been delayed numerous times as the men have waited in detention centers in New York City. This time, it appears it will happen.

U.S. District Judge Colleen McMahon has even ordered the Bureau of Prisons to accept clothes — one dress shirt, one pair of dress pants, one pair of shoes and one leather belt — for each man to wear at the proceeding.

It's anyone's guess what McMahon will tell the men when they get there on Wednesday. The outspoken judge has publicly called the case the "un-terrorism" trial and said the plot would have never happened if the men had been left alone.

But she also refused to dismiss the jury's verdict and said the FBI's investigation, though extravagant, was within the law.

Legal experts looked at the case as a test of the entrapment defense — a defense jurors rejected in their verdict. A lengthy appeal process is expected.

McMahon delayed the sentencing of the fourth defendant, Payen, pending the results of a psychiatric exam. Those results are due in writing on Thursday.